Chapter 8 #2
There were other moments, fleeting but precious.
The way he steadied her elbow when she stumbled on the stairs yesterday, his touch lingering a heartbeat longer than necessary.
How he had asked her opinion on an investment opportunity in shipping, genuinely listening to her response rather than simply going through the motions.
Small things, perhaps, but to Victoria, they felt momentous; green shoots pushing through frozen earth, suggesting that spring might yet come to this winter marriage.
Sometimes she caught him watching her with an expression she could not quite decipher.
Not the cold assessment of their early days, nor the barely concealed disgust that had marked those first terrible weeks.
This was something else, a kind of puzzled wonder, as if she were a book written in a language he was only beginning to understand.
Those moments made her pulse quicken and hope flutter in her chest.
The needle resumed its rhythm, building something beautiful from thread and patience.
She tried not to think about tomorrow evening’s soirée at the Ashfords’, another gauntlet of whispers and turned backs to endure.
She tried not to wonder if Damian would be there, spreading his poison with that easy smile that had once fooled even her.
He moved through society untouched while she remained marked by his cruelty.
Her fingers tightened on the embroidery hoop until her knuckles showed white against her skin.
Three weeks ago, a lady at tea had mentioned seeing Lord Sterling at the opera, how charming he had been, how attentive to young Miss Fairworth.
Victoria had smiled, nodded, and said nothing while bile rose in her throat.
What could she say? That beneath that polished exterior lurked a predator?
Who would believe her now, the desperate girl who had trapped poor Mr. Harcourt into marriage through trickery?
She forced her grip to loosen, focusing on the emerging rose beneath her needle. One petal complete, then another, each one perfect in its own way. This she could control; this she could make right. The past remained unchanged, but perhaps the future—
The front door opened with such force that it struck the wall, the sound echoing through the townhouse. Footsteps followed, not Rees’s usual measured tread but something urgent. Victoria’s needle froze mid-stitch, her heart seizing with sudden fear. Had something happened? Was he injured?
He burst through the drawing room door, and the embroidery hoop tumbled from her fingers.
His appearance struck her, hair wild as if he had been running his hands through it, cravat hanging loose, evening coat askew.
But it was his eyes that held her transfixed, burning with an intensity she had never seen before.
“I encountered Sterling,” he said without preamble, his words rough and breathless.
The name hit her like ice water, draining warmth from the room.
Her hands began to tremble, and she clasped them together in her lap to hide it, though she suspected he saw anyway.
The careful peace they had been building suddenly seemed vulnerable, as if Damian’s shadow could wither them with a touch.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
She could imagine too easily, Damian’s smooth voice spreading lies, painting her as the desperate pursuer.
Had he finally destroyed whatever growing regard Rees might have been developing?
Had her husband come to tell her that he had heard new stories, worse stories, that whatever tentative bond they had been forming was severed?
Rees stood in the doorway, chest heaving, his gaze fixed on her, and Victoria felt the careful stitches of her hope beginning to unravel.
She sat frozen in her chair, watching a storm of emotions cross Rees’s face, confusion giving way to something fiercer, almost savage in its intensity.
His chest rose and fell with each ragged breath, as if he had run miles rather than just from his club, and his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, charging the air in the drawing room.
Her mind raced through terrible possibilities.
Had Damian told him something worse? Some new lie crafted to destroy whatever fragile understanding she and Rees had begun to build?
The thought made her stomach lurch. She had seen how society chose to believe Damian’s version of events, how even decent people preferred the scandal of a desperate woman to the horror of acknowledging what men like Sterling were capable of.
If he had convinced Rees that she had been his willing accomplice…
Rees crossed the room in three swift strides and, to her shock, dropped to his knees beside her chair.
The gesture was unexpected, so contrary to his usual formality, that she could only stare as he reached for her hands, his fingers closing around hers with surprising gentleness despite their tremor.
“I told everyone at White’s that you are innocent of Damian’s accusations.
” The words tumbled out, urgent and raw.
His remarkable gold-flecked eyes, once cold, blazed with conviction as they held hers.
“I told them he is a liar, a predator. That he forced himself on you and then destroyed your reputation when you fought him off.”
The world tilted. Victoria heard the words but could not quite process them, could not reconcile them with the weeks of cold silence, the careful distance, the way he had looked through her as if she were a painting—present but not truly seen. “You... you defended me?”
“Publicly. In front of half of London’s gentlemen’s society.” His jaw twitched. “I told them about the other women he has hurt and made it clear that anyone who speaks against your honor will answer to me.”
Tears came suddenly, weeks of strain, fear, and desperate hope breaking free all at once.
They streamed down her cheeks while her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs finally given release.
No one had defended her. Not since that awful night.
Her father had tried but was laughed off.
Her mother had wrung her hands. Society had turned its back.
But Rees—Rees, who had every reason to despise her—had stood up in that bastion of masculine privilege and proclaimed her innocence.
His grip on her hands tightened, his thumb tracing gentle patterns across her skin, the touch so tender it made her cry harder. She watched through blurred vision as his expression shifted, the fierce protectiveness softening into something else, something that looked almost like regret.
“Victoria.” Her name on his lips sounded different than before, weighted with emotion.
“I owe you an apology. A thousand apologies.” He paused, seeming to gather himself, his thumb still moving in those circles against her wrist. “I was angry about being trapped. Furious, actually. And I took that anger out on you when you were as much a victim as I was. More so, actually.”
She tried to speak, to protest, but he shook his head, silencing her gently.
“You were trapped by Sterling, by society, by desperation to save your family. You did not scheme to catch me in some calculated web. You were drowning and reached for the only lifeline available, even though it might pull someone else under with you.” His voice roughened.
“I should have seen that sooner. Should have recognized the courage it took to make that choice. Instead, I added to your suffering with my coldness, my accusations.”
“I never wanted to trap you,” Victoria choked between sobs, the words she had held inside finally given voice.
“Every night, I lie awake thinking about how I stole your freedom, your choice. You deserved to marry for love, for happiness, not because Mrs. Dove-Lyon rigged a game and I was desperate enough to let her.”
“I know.” The simple acknowledgment made her heart stutter.
Rees shifted closer, still on his knees before her, their joined hands resting on the arm of the chair.
“And perhaps it is madness, but I find I am no longer angry about it. This marriage, this life we have been forced into does not have to be a prison for either of us.”
She searched his face, hardly daring to hope. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying I want to start again. Not as two people forced together by circumstance, but as husband and wife truly trying to build something real.” His eyes held hers with an intensity that made her breath catch.
“Will you let me try? Will you give us a chance to make this marriage more than just a solution to scandal?”
The question hung between them, weighted with possibility.
Victoria thought of the past weeks—the gradual thawing of his manner, the way he had begun coming home for dinner, their careful conversations that had started to feel genuine.
She thought of his laughter two nights ago, unexpected and warm.
The way he had steadied her on the stairs.
How he had asked her opinion on his investments and actually listened.
“Yes,” she whispered, then added in a stronger voice, “Yes, I want that too.”
Something shifted in his expression, relief mixed with an emotion she could not quite name. He rose from his knees in one fluid movement and, before she could process what was happening, pulled her up from the chair and into his arms.
The embrace was nothing like their careful, distant interactions of the past weeks.
His arms wrapped around her with gentle strength, one hand cradling the back of her head while the other pressed against her spine, holding her close but not constraining.
She collapsed against him, her tears soaking into his waistcoat while her hands fisted in the fabric of his coat.
He smelled of brandy and tobacco from the club, but underneath was something uniquely him—warm and solid.
“We will figure this out,” he murmured against her hair, his arms tightening as if he could hold her together through sheer will. “Together.”
The air in the drawing room shimmered with change, with the first stirrings of something that might grow into the marriage neither of them had expected but both were beginning to hope for.
Victoria felt it in the way his heartbeat gradually slowed against her cheek, in the careful tenderness of his touch, in the way he showed no inclination to release her even as her tears finally began to subside.
They stood there in the lamplight, surrounded by familiar furnishings that had witnessed so much coldness between them, and for the first time since that terrible night at the Lyon’s Den, Victoria dared to believe that perhaps, just perhaps, something beautiful might grow from the ashes of their disastrous beginning.